In many commercial or retail environments, spotlighting is used to illuminate products on display. Traditionally, light sources suitable for this purpose are disposed in the ceiling or built into display cases or product shelving. For example, a lighting strip having ON/OFF functionality can be disposed in a product display case to provide a uniform illumination of constant intensity over a retailer's wares. Over time, products may be cycled in and out of a display case or a shelf, but the lighting scheme remains unchanged.
Today's competitive realities are causing retailers to consider various ways of enhancing product appeal. At the same time, modern production processes, as well as product innovations, rapidly create new and updated products. These product updates and new releases lead to a high rate of inventory turnover because new products are being constantly delivered to stores. The retailer is motivated to display these products soon after they arrive into the store inventory. As a result, a portion of the shop, and on some occasions the entire shop, must be redesigned and restocked in a very short time frame.
Accordingly, in view of the challenging competitive climate that currently exists in the retail environment, traditional lighting display approaches have their drawbacks. Retailers would welcome inexpensive, flexible and easy to use display lighting solutions. An interactive shelf luminaire that is easily adjusted to provide customized lighting effects could help alleviate some of the challenges faced by today's retailers.
Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications.
In many cases, retail spotlighting fixtures previously located on the ceiling are being moved to the display shelf. One advantage to this approach is that products can be individually illuminated from a short distance. In order to implement this approach, it has been proposed to mount LED-based linear shelf lighting strips in the display case over the product, or integrated in the product shelf itself. In one approach that has been considered, a luminaire with a touch-sensitive control is used to provide a lighting strip that has dimming functionality. One drawback with this approach is that the same dimming level is applied to all of the LEDs in the strip. In another approach that has been considered, a shelf area luminaire with a gesture sensing mechanism can be employed to provide a single interaction point for determining which LEDs in the luminaire are to be activated. Similarly, a desk lamp may be equipped with a touch-sensitive surface that is configured to activate selected LEDs in a linear LED array.
One drawback to conventional approaches is generating uniform lighting over the target area. However, in retail applications, a uniform light distribution along a display shelf can be perceived by consumers as being dull and uninteresting. This is especially true for displays that display luxury and fashion items. There are often empty spaces between items on a display shelf, and it makes little sense to illuminate these empty spaces along with the items on-sale. For the best effect, high intensity light should be directed onto the products, and no light, or low-intensity light should be directed onto the empty spaces between the products.
Thus, there is a need in the art for an inexpensive, easy-to-install, and easy-to-use display lighting solution that allows the user to tailor the lighting distribution to any given product display. Stated differently, a display lighting system is desired that allows the user to direct the spot lighting effect to any location or region on the shelf, and to adjust the amount of contrast and variation in the lighting distribution as desired.